Topic: U.S. reinforcements take up positions in Baghdad

Team Infidel

U.S. reinforcements take up positions in Baghdad neighborhood as 17 more
killed in Iraq


BAGHDAD, Iraq_U.S. reinforcements sent to Baghdad to help quell violence
took up positions in a restive neighborhood Saturday, while 17 people were
killed across Iraq and two bomb blasts at a market wounded eight people.

The 3,700 soldiers of the Army's 172nd Stryker Brigade moved in from the
northern city of Mosul to bolster U.S. and Iraqi security forces already in
the city.

Several Stryker armored fighting vehicles were seen Saturday in Baghdad's
mostly Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliyah in the western part. Iraqi police
used loudspeakers to encourage residents to go about their business and
reopen shops because the troops were there to protect them.

Dozens of people are killed almost every day in Iraq, mostly in sectarian
violence between Shiite and Sunni extremists that has escalated since a
Shiite shrine was bombed Feb. 22 in Samarra.

In the latest violence, two members of Saddam's former regime were shot dead
in separate incidents Saturday, police said. On Friday, gunmen killed a
bodyguard of a senior Justice Ministry official in western Baghdad, and a
police commando was killed by a roadside bomb in the central city of
Samarra.

Police found four decomposed bodies floating on Tigris river near Suwayrah
town, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad Saturday, said Dr. Hadi
al-Itabi, head of Kut Hospital morgue. Nine more bodies, shot and showing
signs of torture, were found in various parts of Baghdad Saturday, police
said.

Baghdad has been the focus of much of the sectarian bloodshed, along with
terror bombings and other attacks, raising worries about the stability of
Iraq's new unity government.

On Thursday, two top U.S. generals told a Senate committee that Iraq was in
danger of sliding into civil war if the sectarian violence was not
contained.

Adnan al-Dulaimi, head of the main Sunni alliance in the Iraqi Parliament,
said Saturday that the country is in danger of falling into the "circle of a
civil war."

In comments posted on a Sunni party Web site, al-Dulaimi said sectarianism
is being "fed by neighboring countries that do not want stability in Iraq."
He did not elaborate.

Saturday's bombings occurred in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast
of Baghdad. The first blast destroyed a grocery store and the second went
off about five minutes later as police cars arrived at the scene. Police
said the eight wounded included seven civilians and one policeman.

Iraq's Defense Ministry and police announced that 55 suspected insurgents
had been captured around Mosul after a flare-up of violence there Friday.
Authorities also reported the arrests of 22 other insurgents in the western
city of Ramadi and two in Baghdad.

Duraid Mohammed Kashmoula, governor of Nineveh province, of which Mosul is
the capital, said 20 militants were believed to have been killed during
prolonged street gunfights with security forces in the city's eastern
neighborhoods Friday.

The U.S. military command said a soldier died Saturday "due to non-hostile
action" in Anbar province, west of Baghdad. It did not provide details.

At least 2,587 U.S. military personnel have died since the beginning of the
Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

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